TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL (11/15/90)
I have a CMS 60 Meg HD that is about five months old. It worked perfectly for the first three or four months. About a month and a half ago it developed problem A: even when just sitting idling it would all of a sudden decide to go into what sounded like its spin up/initial position sequence. Maybe a half dozen times a day. It got progressively worse for maybe a week and then the problem suddenly went away. It hasn't exhibited that problem for maybe three weeks now. However, about two weeks ago it showed up with problem B: random read errors, mostly shown by the drive light staying constantly on, but various program would report various errors; Prosel's vol repair for instance says "can't read index block" and the bad block scan routine would just hang. It seemed to help to turn the drive off and wait a few minutes and then turn it back on. That problem went on for the better part of a week and then too disappeared for a week. It just showed up again today. Any clues? The drive itself is some flavor of Seagate. Since its still under warranty I have a little breathing room. However I got it from Quality Computers who says it has to be sent to CMS; CMS says it has to either be sent to QC or taken to a local dealer who is supposed to honor the warranty; unfortunately the only three CMS dealers they could name in the Minneapolis area only handle IBM drives. Any clues, suggestions, or sympathy? Assuming I can get straightened out who to send it to, what liklihood is there that it can be fixed or should I just give up and ask for my money back? The CMS techie claimed never to have heard of a similar problem but guessed it was just the power supply slightly out of adjustment. TMPLee@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
sjklafke@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Scott James Klafke) (11/17/90)
In article <901115050424.288199@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL> TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL writes: >I have a CMS 60 Meg HD that is about five months old. It worked >perfectly for the first three or four months. About a month and a half [...] >I got it from Quality Computers who says it has to be sent to CMS; CMS >says it has to either be sent to QC or taken to a local dealer who is >supposed to honor the warranty; unfortunately the only three CMS dealers >they could name in the Minneapolis area only handle IBM drives. Any >clues, suggestions, or sympathy? Assuming I can get straightened out >who to send it to, what liklihood is there that it can be fixed or >should I just give up and ask for my money back? The CMS techie claimed >never to have heard of a similar problem but guessed it was just the >power supply slightly out of adjustment. > >TMPLee@dockmaster.ncsc.mil Well, I have a CMS 60 that went back to the company I bought it from 3 times (one of the times being a week after getting it back). It must be sent back to the place you bought it from. I haven't had any trouble with my new replacement yet, but the first one lasted 5 months also. I like the drive, but I hate the trouble. (When you have about 5 hours, I will tell you about my troubles with Zip Technologies.) Good Luck, Scott -- [_ Scott James Klafke \ Got any water? _] _] 372 E. Bay St. / Yeah, we keep it in the kitchen faucet, [_ [_ Bay View, WI 53207-1236 \ it saves space that way. _] ] (414) 744-9058 / sjklafke@csd4.csd.uwm.edu [
unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu (The Unknown User) (01/02/91)
I posted here recently about a hard drive I had gotten on a clear- ance sale.. (A Seagate ST251N 40 meg hard drive) I went to an electronics store and bought a hard drive case/fan/power supply ($50.. pretty good price when you see that Tulin case/power supply costs what, like $100-$150?) Well, I have had some weird happenings with stuff.. The original cable on the back of the case was a 40 pin IDC cable (like the Disk ][ cables, but more pins).. A service guy said that the case was apparently made for IDE (?) drives.. Since the power supply and hard drive have the same actual power plug, I have assumed all along that the power supply is right for the drive.. The male plug on the drive is 4 cylindrical pins pointing up with a plastic rectangular receptacle around them so that the plug can only go in one way. Well, I hooked everything up, and made a SCSI cable.. The regular store I went to was out of one type of connector since it seems other people were doing basically the same thing I was doing.. (The guy said something to the effect of "People are realizing they can use the drives on their Macs" Which, even though I don't have a Mac, was exactly what I was doing).. Jeez, those no-solder ribbon-connect connectors are really neat.. I actually busted a little hook on BOTH ends so neither hooks 100% together, but they stay together well enough.. Another thing.. The guys at Fry's (where I bought the drive) told me the connection was straight through from the 50 pin IDC connector on the back of the drive to the 50 pin Centronics connector where the SCSI cable connects. Well, back to the story.. I hooked everything up, turned on the drive, let it spin up, turned on the computer, booted GS/OS.. And NOTHING.. I was starting to worry when it didn't bring up the little box that says "install a SCSI driver and reboot".. But I rebooted once regular for the heck of it.. Then I installed the driver just in case... And still it wouldn't recognize the drive.. So I took everything apart.. And there was a trace on the board underneath the drive that was -in the air- above the board and broken.. So it had apparently burned out. Now from then on I've basically been paranoid that I burned the drive out.. We tested the power supply at Fry's and it was giving the correct voltages. The only thing I can think of is this: (1) Even though the case and drive have the same plug, could they have different presumptions about which voltage is on which pin??! Seems doubtful to me.. Other than that, what could I have done wrong? The good news is that Fry's took it back to send back to Seagate, since it seems like I didn't do anything stupid, so it could have been a manufacturing defect or something.. It'll take 4-8 weeks to get back, but I'm already trying to find out more about the drive and such (I will call Seagate to try to get a manual or something.. Since this was a clearance sale, all I got was the drive on a piece of cardboard shrinkwrapped.. It -does- have the warranty though). Any kind of info that would help me learn about this drive and/or prevent anything from happening again would be greatly appreciated. -- /Apple II(GS) Forever! unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu MAIL ME FOR INFO ABOUT CHEAP CDs\ \WRITE TO ORIGIN ABOUT ULTIMA VI //e and IIGS! Mail me for addresses, & info. /
ST6934@SIUCVMB.BITNET (04/21/91)
I heartily recommend ProBlock 3.0 to recover lost files. Although it's a manual process, I was able to recover ALL files from a disk with blocks $0 to $C trashed. I should clarify that... all of the files recovered were in subdirectories. The files in the root directory had their names trashed in blocks $0 - $C. I could have recovered those files also, but it wasn't necessary. I knew which files were in the main directory and the order so if I wanted to I could have recovered those files. As always, support shareware. Andy Werner st6934@siucvmb.bitnet